


Consilience

by omphale23



Series: Personal Pineapples [10]
Category: Life, Standoff
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-14
Updated: 2010-03-14
Packaged: 2017-10-08 00:18:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/70759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/omphale23/pseuds/omphale23
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It starts with a clementine.</p><p>Or, really, it starts with Charlie's annoying love of the Sunday morning crowd at the farm stand, the one held up the ridge from his ridiculous house.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Consilience

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [between two points of no return](https://archiveofourown.org/works/70750) by [omphale23](https://archiveofourown.org/users/omphale23/pseuds/omphale23). 



> Contains bondage, pain kink, present tense, and serial comma splices.
> 
> None of these are [sansets](http://sansets.livejournal.com)'s fault, but she did require that there be something resembling a narrative, and point out that if I stopped writing Matt as my thinly-disguised id, I wouldn't be able to write him at all.
> 
> This story is part of the AU-crossover-universe-of-doom, but that doesn't mean it fits with anything else.

It starts with a clementine.

Or, really, it starts with Charlie's annoying love of the Sunday morning crowd at the farm stand, the one held up the ridge from his ridiculous house. It's just far enough away that he hates Charlie for wanting to walk, without being quite far enough that Matt can insist on driving.

Anyway. Oranges aren't sweet enough for weekends, it turns out, and so Charlie jogs—jogs the entire way, because he is evil—which means that Matt has to run as well, just to keep up, and by the time they arrive they're both shaky and tired and Matt's hair is stuck to his face and sweat is dripping down the back of his neck. He hates the feeling, and hates that Charlie waits until he knows that Matt is about to turn around and go home angry.

Only then does Charlie lean over, brace himself on a fence, and grin at the pavement like an idiot. Only when Matt is convinced that he is going to strangle Charlie do they wander over to the stupid fruit stand. Only then will Charlie roll weird citrus fruits between his hands and tip his face back, breathe deep.

Charlie is far, far more patient than he ought to be.

He waits until Matt is biting his tongue and clenching his jaw to hold back the fight, and then Charlie stops, peels away the skin slowly from something that isn't quite an orange, and lifts a piece of fruit to Matt's lips.

Matt is already halfway to forgiving by the time Charlie remembers to kiss him.

-

On the way home, they walk. Charlie ducks around the house, strips them both to the skin, and pulls Matt into the pool to kiss again in the shallows. Lazy with the heat and the day stretching out ahead.

Matt scrapes his shoulder climbing out but shrugs off the sting. He watches Charlie swim laps and bites on his cheek until he tastes copper and citrus. Charlie doesn't look up from the water, just slides through it untouched, back and forth, the sound seeping into Matt's bones until he closes his eyes and falls asleep under the sun.

-

Matt's enjoying the roll of Charlie's hips under his hands and the heat of Charlie's skin under his tongue, the warmth of balancing here in the dark and the quiet, kneeling between Charlie and the wall. It's a game, Charlie solid above him and waiting to see what he should do next, whether Matt will allow—

And then Charlie pushes a little too hard and Matt jerks back, chokes, the solid press of Charlie's hand at the back of his skull a warning and a buffer between him and the sharp clean crack of plaster. Matt flinches and then goes boneless, not sure what he wants. When he opens his eyes again, Charlie is watching his face.

-

It's all simpler in books, in the videos that Matt watches when he's bored and curious and Charlie's out too late and the house breathes silence. He drags the tines of a fork up the inside of his arm and watches the lines flush pink, tracks of almost-pain. He holds his wrist _tight tighter tightest_ until his fingers crack and his knuckles fade white. Imagines Charlie's hands on him.

It's not simple at all.

-

Charlie peels them with the same intensity he gives to everything. When he's done, he throws the peel, long winding strip of orange and white and orange again, over his shoulder.

It hits the tile with a snap, curled into a shape that could be a language. Charlie takes a deep, shaky breath and doesn't turn around to read the future. He looks at Matt, instead.

-

Charlie installs—Matt's not sure what it is, other than a hook in the ceiling, anchored in a roof beam, but he has a sudden interest in knot work that Matt is very, very carefully ignoring for the moment. Hope is the wrong word.

-

That speculative look on Charlie's face, the way he presses his thumbs into Matt's shoulders too hard, the casual scrape of his nails down the length of Matt's spine, a nebulae of fading bruises. Images that Matt keeps for himself, moments that he takes out and watches in a loop during the pauses in conversations.

It's unhealthy, unprofessional, and most of all, completely useless, but Matt can't find it in him to care. He won't ask for more, but he thinks that Charlie might offer, given enough time and patience.

Asking would ruin it, whatever it is.

-

Matt has a knife, a boot knife out of a box in his father's attic. He found it years ago, wrapped in parachute silk along with a book of poems, names and dates and places written in spidery ink on the flyleaves. Before Matt really had time to consider whether it was a good idea, he'd taken the whole slippery, dusty package, carried it downstairs, and shoved it between his bed and the mattress.

It didn't make any sense, keeping these things, but the pages of poetry were age-tanned and smeared with mud stains. They made him wonder who cared about those words so much, why the pages fell open to _the awful daring of a moment's surrender_. The silk was soft on his fingertips, the book had been carried to cities that Matt hadn't ever imagined, but it was the knife that caught him. He spent weeks polishing it, oiling the blade and cleaning the handle and sliding the whole thing back together again to wait for a purpose.

Now, decades later, he's wrapped the knife in silver paper and left it on Charlie's pillow.

Matt sits on the balcony, his back carefully to the open door, and waits.

-

He thought it would hurt more. Or maybe bring panic, knowing that Charlie has all the power in this room, is sliding Matt's arms higher until they stretch and ache. He thought he would regret letting go, or struggle, or flinch away from the edges of what they're both accepting. He thought—Matt doesn't really want to think, not right now. He lets it go.

-

Charlie stops asking for permission. Matt gives it freely.

-

Matt notices the world, even with the blindfold and the way his fingers have started to go slightly numb from the knots around his wrists. Charlie can be as stealthy as he likes, and Matt will pretend to be surprised, but he smells of oranges and Matt knows when he's walked into the room.

Sometimes Matt turns his head at the sharp bite of it, at the way the scent wraps around when he desperately doesn't want to imagine more, about what's coming next. But mostly he holds still, tenses with the thrum of waiting for the inevitable, flexes his fingers and takes a deep breath, pulls the smell into his lungs as Charlie watches him in silence.


End file.
